The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles Dickens

CHAPTER XVIII— THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL

It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall
leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of
constant indecision on this subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch in
a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity,
sea-sickness — who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach — who had been put into a
horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or
anywhere. Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a
look out for it, I recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know — and I
can bear — its worst behaviour.

Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this
bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea,
exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to
despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has
Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think you are there
— roll, roar, wash! — Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and
slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that
garrison-town, when it dives under the boat’s keel, and comes up a league or two to the right, with the packet
shivering and spluttering and staring about for it!

Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it
goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than
any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends, but
they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good
house to stay at, and I don’t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I know the
Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon that
circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden
likewise, for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows
quite soon enough, without the officious Warden’s interference?

As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to
me to be illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour. All its noises smack of
taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The drums upon the heights
have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this slippery deck.
The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of Dover
bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third.

A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more
smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it,
and were prevented by circumstances over which they had no control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become
violently agitated — rumble, hum, scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing-day at each paddle-box. Bright
patches break out in the train as the doors of the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures with
sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy
Jones’s Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of
gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the
worst and pretending not to expect it. I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that we are a
body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least
possible delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us;
that the sole object is to commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in increasing distance,
and then the very train itself has gone to bed before we are off!

What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the
Channel always put up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature near me — whom I
only know to BE a fellow-creature, because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or
bulkbead — clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there any
analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up, and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board
with a flop replies ‘Stand by!’ ‘Stand by, below!’ ‘Half a turn a head!’ ‘Half a turn a head!’ ‘Half speed!’ ‘Half
speed!’ ‘Port!’ ‘Port!’ ‘Steady!’ ‘Steady!’ ‘Go on!’ ‘Go on!’

A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my
throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers, — these are the personal sensations by
which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have
scarcely established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand,
get flung together, and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them up. Then
the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes no good.

It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never
will forgive that hated town. I have done so before, many times, but that is past. Let me register a vow. Implacable
animosity to Calais everm — that was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining
roar.

The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold,
and the shapeless passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the laundress; but for my
own uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A general howling,
whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the impressions
I receive are very vague. In a sweet faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel
languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the
Irish melodies. ‘Rich and rare were the gems she wore,’ is the particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing
it to myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest expression. Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting
on the hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don’t mind it,) and notice that I am a
whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a
lighthouse on the English coast; but I don’t notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais.
Then I go on again, ‘Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But
O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond’ — I am particularly proud of my execution here, when I become aware of another
awkward shock from the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly
indisposed than I think he need be — ‘Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond’
— another awkward one here, and the fellow-creature with the umbrella down and picked up — ‘Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or
her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wash,
white wand.’

As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is
going on around me becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open the furnace doors below, to feed the fires,
and I am again on the box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for ever extinguished
coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is THEIR gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous
noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at every
violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in
which I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, and when only its causes were. A fragment of mast
on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so, become suggestive of Franconi’s
Circus at Paris where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to the self-same
time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on, I
cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something
about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first went a seafaring and was near foundering
(what a terrific sound that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this, I
must ask her (who WAS she I wonder!) for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to stray, So
lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin’s sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more
fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight I feel not the least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm,
For though they love fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight they what a tremendous one
love honour and virtue more: For though they love Stewards with a bull’s eye bright, they’ll trouble you for your
ticket, sir-rough passage to-night!

I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of
those last words from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing that
those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes
round their necks by which they have since been towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now
begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez
well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but
still ahead and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais, begin to expand my
bosom. I have weak notions that I will stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent stranger pausing
in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin, asks me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a
very agreeable place indeed — rather hilly than otherwise.

So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly — though still I seem to have been on board a week — that I
am bumped, rolled, gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has finally lighted her
through the Green Isle, When blest for ever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we have
not to land to-night down among those slimy timbers — covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids’ favourite
combing-place — where one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up the harbour
to the Railway Station Quay. And as we go, the sea washes in and out among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and
in quite a furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One
seem to send their vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come struggling against troubled water. And
now, in the sudden relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a prodigious double-tooth out, and
to be this very instant free of the Dentist’s hands. And now we all know for the first time how wet and cold we are,
and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of hearts!

‘Hotel Dessin!’ (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery
representative of that best of inns). ‘Hotel Meurice!’ ‘Hotel de France!’ ‘Hotel de Calais!’ ‘The Royal Hotel, Sir,
Angaishe ouse!’ ‘You going to Parry, Sir?’ ‘Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?’ Bless ye, my Touters, bless ye, my
commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or night, fair
weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never see you get! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and
grey; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the
bottom to give my change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of chaff or grain! I have nothing to
declare, Monsieur le Douanier, except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written on my heart. No
article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur l’Officier de l’Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast
devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my
dearest brother and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the names! May he be for ever changeless in
his buttoned black surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat, surmounting his round, smiling,
patient face! Let us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours e tout jamais — for the whole of ever.

Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of ‘an
ancient and fish-like smell’ about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais represented at the Buffet by
savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons with a
monomania for changing money — though I never shall be able to understand in my present state of existence how they
live by it, but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency question — Calais EN GROS, and Calais EN DETAIL,
forgive one who has deeply wronged you. — I was not fully aware of it on the other side, but I meant Dover.

Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers. Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke,
Lille, Douai, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of the uncommercial interest, ascend with
the rest. The train is light to-night, and I share my compartment with but two fellow-travellers; one, a compatriot in
an obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they don’t keep ‘London time’ on a French railway,
and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a
young priest, with a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up
in the network above his head, where he advances twittering, to his front wires, and seems to address me in an
electioneering manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction, as
he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who joined us at
Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have it all to ourselves.

A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night
so very stormy, with the added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the Guard comes clambering round to
mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really horrible performance in an express train, though he holds on to
the open window by his elbows in the most deliberate manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the
collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let him go. Still, when he is gone, the small, small bird remains at his
front wires feebly twittering to me — twittering and twittering, until, leaning back in my place and looking at him in
drowsy fascination, I find that he seems to jog my memory as we rush along.

Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in their idle thriftless way through all this range of
swamp and dyke, as through many other odd places; and about here, as you very well know, are the queer old stone
farm-houses, approached by drawbridges, and the windmills that you get at by boats. Here, are the lands where the women
hoe and dig, paddling canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the cabarets and other peasant-houses where the
stone dove-cotes in the littered yards are as strong as warders’ towers in old castles. Here, are the long monotonous
miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted, and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the
forehead, sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to see. Scattered through this country are
mighty works of VAUBAN, whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard of once upon a time, and many
a blue-eyed Bebelle. Through these flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long, grotesque files of
young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you remember blackening the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy trees.
And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up
from the station tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were circling round and round a
barrel-organ on hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in the Fair was a Religious
Richardson’s — literally, on its own announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX. In which improving Temple, the
dramatic representation was of ‘all the interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the Tomb;’ the
principal female character, without any reservation or exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in
trimming the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next principal female character took the money,
and the Young Saint John disported himself upside down on the platform.

Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased
to twitter, and has put his head under his wing. Therefore, in my different way I follow the good example.